Bedtime

06/11/2015

It’s on again with Oliver and his beloved, after a months-long fallow period in which she turned her attention to another boy. We have no idea what changed (O attributes it to his mad soccer moves) but the object of his affection asked him this week to once again be her boyfriend. She has not dropped the other boy as a result, we are told, but this is seemingly of no concern.

As a refresher, Girl is in Grade 2, and O is in Grade 1. This is part of a pattern. As early as three, Oliver was well aware of the allure of the older woman. At parks we would catch him gaping at six-year-old stunners, awed by their power. Even then, he had good taste. The girls he liked then, and now, have never had to be little Barbies or match their pink with more pink. Instead, they have had to rock their outfits and look a little undone. They are blessed with just the right kind of confidence, the kind that saves them from caring what other people think. These girls dart around the playground, usually trailed by a band of followers. They are neither overly nice nor overly mean. Heartbreakers.

So, yeah, Girl.

Last night before going to sleep, O asked me to tell him one of his favourite stories, the one where I’m 15 at the Dairy Queen with the guy I like: Jeff, who just happens to be 17. Jeff buys me a milkshake, brings it back to the table and sits down. I decide that the best strategy for making him love me is to bat my eyelashes. This is not as easy as you might think, because you don’t want to do it too often or you look crazy, and do want to look like you’re listening even as you’re batting. It’s a lot to coordinate—too much it turns out—since I end up pouring my milkshake down my shirt without even knowing it.

Ahahahaha! Poor mom! (Not so poor; Jeff became my first real boyfriend, and a good one at that.)

It’s time to go to sleep. No it’s not, says Oliver, not until I tell you a story. Fine.

“There’s this boy, in Grade 1, and this girl, in Grade 2, and they decide to be boyfriend [Oliver Dan, for some reason] and girlfriend [you know who]. So the boyfriend takes his girlfriend to a restaurant. She wants crouton salad with corn and tomatoes. He wants a hamburger. But the problem is that as the waitress is taking their orders, she sees how amazing and handsome Oliver Dan is, so she gets jealous and wants to be his girlfriend, too. But she can’t so instead she gets her vial of deadly poison and puts two drops on each of the boyfriend and girlfriend's meals, the salad and the burger. But what she doesn’t know is that Oliver Dan is really Cat Man and his girlfriend is Marvel Woman and they have superpowers that include not ever being able to die from poison. So the waitress was sad and they were alive.”

05/22/2015

For the past little while I've found my energy flagging, my sleep broken, and things just a bit darker than they should really appear. Yesterday O and G gently, unknowingly flicked a switch in me just by being who they are.

O was excited to go to the dentist to get his front tooth yanked out (the one that, according to biased family lore, was fractured when Craig lowered his rump onto a then-two-year-old O's head, which was resting innocently on the bathtub rim). He happily endured the needle, freezing, and pliers and thrilled in the bloody gap yielded by the process; he was infinitely older and wiser and now had the day off.

We went on a nature walk. He took me to Westboro Beach where we looked for ... anything ... and led me to secret places among treacherous bushes, checking with me always when I cried out in pain when stabbed by thorns. "Are you okay, mom? Is it a bad one?"

His spirit grew still more generous on the way home when we passed by a 60s-ish woman kneeling in the garden, working away at weeds. "I like your flexibility!" he called, and the look of surprise and delight on her face (plus the huge laugh) was pretty brilliant.

At home, things got a bit more subdued when I begged him to do some writing practice, since he is just not very concerned with legibility. I tensed up, waiting for a struggle, but he took out a piece of paper and a pen and I busied myself around the kitchen. After ten minutes or so, he handed me this:

Which reads: "Why my mom is the bust mom because shy reads me Harry Poter to put me to bead and other wies she's just a good mom. Love Oliver To Mom."

So of course I cried.

Then Georgie came home and told me I smelled like rainbow-chocolate-candy. A great start, but then things took a turn when I asked her to stop watching a show on the iPad and she threw her plate across the island onto the floor. This startled even her, so I didn't actually get mad (keep in mind her brother had had the day off, which she was more than aware of) but insisted on a little quiet time upstairs.

Upstairs, we moved back into rainbow territory. We snuggled into my bed and Georgia proceeded to kiss everything on me she could: my hair, my eyebrows, my ears, etc. And giggling all the time. She talked to me about the various affronts of her school day—who was "teasy," who was her friend, who was mean, how she hated the tacos for lunch—and I could feel the tension releasing from her body with every kiss and rant.

We went downstairs. I cooked dinner. It was incredible: chickpeas, spinach, tomatoes, onions cooked in mountains of wine, butter, and garlic. O looked up at me after a few pained bites and launched into his rejection: "Mom, I appreciate that you worked so hard to make this dinner but ..." George was a little more forceful. "NOOOOOOOO! I won't! It's disgustin'! (Cue crying, then hysteria, some more "quiet" time upstairs, and eventually, yes, cold Kraft dinner from yesterday.)

10/03/2011

I gotta get it down, I know I do. I look back on all the entries on Oliver and I know I would remember less than half of what happened had I not documented it here. But so far, I’ve written so little on Georgia.

The story with G is both more complicated and simpler than with O. O was and is so outrageous that his exploits demand a public venue. And writing it out makes it easier to laugh than to cry; the two emotions are so close when it comes to parenting O. I am rarely, rarely quietly soaking up the best of O: I am hit over the head with it, sometimes literally. He either makes you want to pull your hair out or cover him with kisses. The other day at a christening: “Mama, can you pull my pants up? I just peed under the table with Molly” (and ripped up all the grass to boot). The other night in the tub: Me: “Should I get out now to make some room for you?” O: “No, I love you too much.”

With G, things are quieter. Of course part of that is that she’s only eight months old; but O was yammering and yelling his head off at eight months. G coos, and cries, and laughs, but mostly she smiles. Mostly she concerns herself with letting you know you’re the sweetest thing she’s ever laid eyes on, and every time she sees you, it’s like she’s surprised to have been blessed anew. She looks up and simply beams. You smile back and she looks like she might topple over from gratitude. When she’s really thrilled with something, G succumbs to a fit of snorting and sniffling that scrunches up her whole face and her toothless grin doubles in size. She’s normally a beauty, but this show of ecstasy is almost creature-like in its bizarre adorableness.

Like all second children, G watches her elder sibling closely and is particularly chuffed when she’s allowed to follow in his footsteps, like when we guide her down slides or push her slowly in a baby swing. She struggles for O’s attention when he’s not bestowing it vigorously of his own accord; if it’s won, she gets a look of pure satisfaction and adoration. If anyone’s going to make Georgia laugh, it’s Oliver.

I am writing this in bed, in the dark, with Georgia dreaming beside me. We have at most three nights left before she leaves my bed to be sleep-trained, away from me and nursing, into her crib in another room, soothed for the first few nights by her dad and eventually by no one but herself. It seems impossible. I can’t imagine not sleeping with her, though she now wakes at least four times a night and I can’t function most mornings I’m so tired. In the night, when she cries out expectantly, whether it’s for the first or seventh time, I turn over lightning quick to put her back to sleep. And stroke her downy hair. And hold hands. And listen to her breathe as she settles again.

05/30/2011

When Oliver turned three last month, he really took it upon himself to shake off the lowly two’s and assume his rightful place as a big boy. He wished the year adieu—“Goodbye, two,” he said solemnly, walking on Elgin Street the morning of his birthday—and, as if he had it all mapped out, he updated his persona and activities to suit the new times.

In particular, Oliver is done with simple declarations and plain old fart and poo jokes. The latter will always entertain (duh!), but he’s now experimenting with more sophisticated humour, word play, and stories. I don’t think we’re alone, as parents, in delighting in the awkward, foreign weight of the “adultisms” (my word for the throwaway phrases we all get used to using) he’s peppering into his language.

It started with “actually”:

“Actually, I’ll have raisins with my oatmeal.”

“Actually, these are not pants, they’re jeans.”

“Actually, is my Spiderman mask still in the Jesus dryer?”

Okay, maybe not the Jesus part, but you get the gist of it.

Now he’s progressed to reminding me of things (not a bad idea):

O: “I’d like to remind you of something, mama.”

Me: “Yes?”

O: “I’d like to remind you that when I was a baby, when I was just borned, my titi [his penis] was attached to your bellybutton by a string.”

Me: “Well, not your titi so much as your bellybutton, kind of.”

O: “Mama, I’d like to remind you that when I was a baby, my bellybutton was attached …kind of … to your ... bellybutton ... by a string. [Pause] Why mama? Why?”

Me: [Pause] [Pause] “Thank you for reminding me, Oliver.”

It’s with gusto, too, that O is trotting out his new sense of language. Gusto and a touch of sanctimony. For about a year, I have neglected to tell Oliver that his pronunciation of “orangutan,” that smelly jungle swinger, is well, wrong. That’s because his own version is so danged cute: “tangorang.” But now that he’s all big and worldly, I felt I owed him the truth the other night when one of the monkeys appeared in a bedtime story. I was a little nervous about what his reaction would be; he’s not in love with being corrected (a trait inherited from his father). I needn’t have fretted.

Me: “Oliver, you know that, actually, that monkey is an O-RANG-A-TAN? An O, RANG, A, TAN, you know?”

O, with the merest of blinks: “Yes, or, ‘Tangorang,’ mama. ‘Tangorang’ for short."

That was a peaceful night. On not so peaceful nights, sometimes we offer Craig up as a threat to O for bad behaviour. Is this a good idea? No. Will it scar their relationship forever? Maybe. But it does make for some good humour. For example, when Oliver was wriggling madly out of protest on our insistence he get in the bath the other night, we informed him that Craig would go to sleep with him rather than me if he didn’t hop in pronto. His response:

“Go to bed with dada? [Pause]. Not mama? [Pause] We can’t have THAT!”

Three is definitely, for us, the transition from O’s merely enjoying communicating and acquiring words to really playing with them and exploring concepts. One of these concepts is friendship. He definitely associates friends with good things. When he and Craig were traipsing through Halifax’s beautiful Public Gardens on Spring Road a couple of weeks ago, he noted, “I used to live here with my friends.” Hmm. And whenever he sees kids his age when we’re out walking, whether he knows them or not, he says, “Those are friends of mines [sic].”

No matter how much of a big boy Oliver is now and sophisticated with language, there’s one concept he can’t grasp; but none of us can. We had to put our kitty down last week (very sad) and we thought it had kind of gone over O's head since he wasn’t too troubled the day it happened. But tonight, he wanted kitty back.

O: “Where is kitty?”

Me: “Oliver, he’s gone now. He died.”

O: “How much did he die?”

Me: “All the way.”

O: “Oh.”

O: “I want kitty back.”

So we hugged. Sometimes talking is good, and sometimes hugging is better.

01/18/2011

It started about two months ago: “Tell me a story, mama.” At first it was cute. Given my own love for stories and books and my hope that they will assume at least as prominent a place in Oliver’s life as video games and sports, I was only too happy to sputter them out, however ill-plotted and clumsy given their spur-of-the-moment origins. But now it’s a bit of a pressure-cooker ... every night—and often with orders for a theme. He’ll even start me out: “Once upon a time there was an alligator. Now tell it, mama.”

Sometimes when I’m tired (which is almost always these days) I’ll try to turn the tables and demand a story out of him. The result is usually hockey related:

“Once upon a time there was a strange goalie named Bobby Lou [Canucks player Roberto Luongo’s nickname] and all the other goalies loved him.”

“And? What happened?”

“That’s it. The end. Now tell me a story, mama.”

As I say, most of my stories are pretty bad. I plan to work on that, but for now I have a forgiving audience and so I’m not sweating it too much. One is not so bad, and this is the most requested. Without further ado:

The Little Bird and the Big Bullfrog

Once upon a time there was a little bird. He had only just hatched from his egg in his cozy nest at the top of a tall, tall tree when a strong wind came and shook the tree to its roots.

The little bird’s nest toppled from its branch and fell down, down to the ground, and he tumbled out in a great fluff of feathers. He had absolutely no idea where he was. He couldn’t ask his mom—she had gone off before the windstorm to find some food for dinner. Not knowing what else to do, the little bird began to walk. He had not yet learned to fly.

Before long, he reached a greeny-blue pond covered in lilly pads. He sat down beside it for a rest, but was soon startled by a loud

SPLASH!

And water came flying out of the pond! Something huge had obviously jumped in. The little bird ran as fast as his little legs could take him to a hiding spot, thinking it must be some kind of horrible monster. But then he got curious, crept up to the edge of the pond, and peered in.

What he saw there was a big old bullfrog who was swimming around in lazy circles. Occasionally the frog did somersaults, and once he even stood on his head with his feet sticking up out of the water. It looked like so much FUN!

After a while, the big bullfrog heaved himself onto a lilly pad and lay down to bask in the sun.

The little bird summoned up his courage and spoke to the frog.

“Excuse me Mr. Bullfrog?”

The big frog opened one eye, then the other, then opened his mouth wide and yawned.

“Yes? How can I help you?” he drawled.

“Mr. Bullfrog, I want to swim like you.”

The frog opened his mouth again, but this time what came out was a huge laugh.

“Swim? You can’t swim! You’re a bird. Birds don’t swim, they fly,” he managed to get out after he had stopped laughing so much.

“Fly? What’s fly?” asked the little bird. He looked very sad and confused, and the big bullfrog saw that he must be kind and help the little bird.

He said, “Why, all birds can fly, because they have wings. You have wings on your back, little bird, and all you have to do is stretch them out to know they’re there.”

So the little bird felt around his back and sure enough there were a couple of wings. After a couple of minutes of fumbling around he was able to stretch them out till they went right out beside his body like airplane wings.

“That’s right!” said the big bullfrog. “Now flap them some!”

The little bird flapped and flapped, and was able to dance and jump around pretty high and fast as a result. But he wasn’t flying.

“Hmmm,” said the frog. “How about you take a little run WHILE you flap your wings and see what happens?”

The little bird did as told, and all of a sudden he was

FLYING!

First he flew as high as the trees. Then he flew as high as the clouds. While he was up there, he saw a burst of colour that made him so happy he flew even higher and faster. As he got nearer, he saw that it wasn’t just one colour but many:

Green

Yellow

Red

Blue

and

Orange

And underneath all these colours was a brown basket with a man sitting reading a book inside. It was a hot air balloon, and the little bird had never seen anything so beautiful.

He flew up to the balloon and asked the man inside the basket if he could join him for a rest. The man said yes, and even pulled out a tiny cushion for the bird to sit down on. The little bird and the man sat together looking down on the world and feeling very happy.

After a while, though, the little bird started missing his mom, and missing the big old bullfrog. He was no longer tired, and after he thanked the man for his kindness, the little bird flapped his wings and flew into the air.

After flying for a bit, he realized to his amazement that coming up in front of him was the very tree out of which he had fallen because of the wind! It seemed like such a long time ago.

He flew up to the tree and to his surprise and relief, there sat his mom in a new nest she had built. She looked sad.

“Mom! Mom!”

She whirled around in the direction of his voice. “Little bird? Can it really be you?”

The little bird swooped gently into the nest beside his mom. “Yes, mom, it’s really me, and I’ve found you.”

“Little bird, you’re flying! How can this be? Who taught you to fly?”

“A kind old bullfrog in a pond not too far from here on the ground. I wanted to swim but he taught me to fly instead!”

“A bullfrog taught you to fly! Now this frog I have to meet. Let’s go down to the ground and you can introduce me.”

So the two birds flew together down to the pond and found the big old frog sunning himself on a lilly pad. The little bird’s mom thanked him for being so good to her baby, and the bullfrog hugged the little bird and said how proud he was that the little bird had had the courage to fly. From then on, the birds and the bullfrog were the very best of friends and had picnics together all the time.